I am in the process of building an app for use by a set of senior citizens living in an old age home. Until now we were using the manual system, which is prone to errors and omissions. In the circumstances, I, as resident of this community volunteered to migrate from the manual to the digital system. Though I’ve put this across to the residents, I find it hard to convince them unless I can show them how an app would work and make things easier for all of us. To get to that point I decided to use Glide to create an app from our database. Consequently, I created several tables like: Basic Data. Meal Options, Absences etc. I had no problem with configuring formulas, relations or look-ups in the tables, though my roadblocks are with the creation of the layout.
We have apartment numbers, which are unique, hence I have taken this as the unique identifier for each table to create relationships and lookups. My problem is the following:
- In the layout when I enter an apartment number, the connected fields are not populated automatically.
a. I have ensured that the data source is correct
b. I notice that some fields, especially the computed one (Math) do not show up in the drop-down list to be chosen for the field that has to appear in the screen.
- My intention is to display a bill of the expenses incurred under each head with the total for any period, say a month / week or year.
If I get through this roadblock, I think I may be able to configure other screens too.
Currently we have 120 residents in our database and each one of them should be in a position to access their details of expenses. But before we give access to all, I would like to make sure that it will work and also to demonstrate it to the users, who are not very tech savvy.
Please let me know, if I must pay for such help and queries.
We need some more information here. Preferably screenshots of what you have. I suspect you are trying to do everything inside a form or a form container, which is designed for adding new rows of data instead of looking at existing rows. You may be wanting to do something on a detail screen instead, but its really hard to say without know what you are seeing on your end and what you are trying to do.
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Thank you Jeff for the prompt response.
Here is the screenshot of what I’m trying to do:
Please note that I have ‘Breakfast Cost’ configured in the Table, but it does not appear in the drop-down list on theleft
What type of column is ‘Breakfast Cost’?
A Math column is a computed column. It calculate it’s own value based on values in other columns.
A text entry component is designed to take user input and write it to a column in your table.
Why are you trying to connect a component meant for user entry, to a column that does not accept user entry?
Yes, I agree that the math column is dependent on other columns. I want the cost displayed in the layout when the Apartment Number is entered. If I can do this I should be able to display the bill for the month. Please help me get to that.
Instead of ‘Text Entry’ component what would be the component that would serve my purpose? I just tried Text entry because I could not find any better component.
If you are just trying to display the result from the math column, you can use a text component, rich text component, big number component, etc. Basically anything used for output instead of input.
Ok, let me try that. Pl let me know which are the output components?
Any component that doesn’t let you type in it… especially ones labeled “Entry”.
Play around and experiment with the different components to understand what they do.
OK, thanks a million for that clue! Let me try it.
Jeff, There does not seem to be any description indicating which are the input and output components. Further, if I add a ‘Rich Text’, should I enable its visibility and action as well? I tried it, but nothing seems to appear on thr screen.
Just jumping in here, I think it would be worth your while spending a little time in Glide University to learn some of the basics. Look for the “Introduction to Glide” course. You’ll see it in the featured courses on the home screen.
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Just as you had suggested, I went through lessons and played with the components. I’ve made decent progress after that. Now I need some help in creating an input where residents would login several times in a month to add their absences (dates From -To) and their preferences whether, they will be taking a particular meal (Breakfast / Lunch / Dinner) that day or during the specified period. Once this is done I would need to tabulate the requirements individually as well as collectively both for the day as well as the billing period. How to go about that? I mean the shortest way.
So Absences and Preferences would be two forms, or just one?
From Absences and Preferences, you would then calculate the amount of breakfast/lunch/dinner that is needed to be prepared for any particular day?
Absences and Preferences would be in one Table. And from this data we will have to calculate the number of meals / day and the costs
BTW, I’m working on this app in my laptop. I tried viewing it my mobile screen just to see how it works there, but on clicking the link it was just buffering! Have I not followed the right procedure? What I did was, I clicked the ‘share’ button on the top right corner of the screen from where a link was copied into my phone, where my mail Id was asked and then access given.
Can you share your data structure for this? I’m having a hard time thinking what the data structure would be like for you to work with it down the line.
What do you mean by “the link was just buffering”? Do you mean it doesn’t load at all on your mobile?
